


Taking Christmas Off

by NiceHatGeorgia



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, spoilers through season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-17 13:16:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13077663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiceHatGeorgia/pseuds/NiceHatGeorgia
Summary: How Sam and Jack end up spending Christmas alone together every single year, accidentally at first, and then very much on purpose. A fluffy/shippy Christmas fic in eight parts, with spoilers through season 8.





	1. Chapter 1

 

The first year they spend Christmas together, just the two of them, it’s completely accidental, and kind of cliche, because they’re stranded on an alien planet.

 

“If you didn’t want to go to Walter’s Christmas party, you could’ve just told him no, Carter.” Jack says.

 

“Hey,” she replies with a teasing smile. “You go right ahead, sir. The gate’s three klicks that way."

 

In fact, there’s absolutely nothing between them and the gate. There’s nothing wrong with the DHD, or their GDOs. There’s nothing to prevent them from heading home, back to Colorado Springs and Sergeant Harriman’s Christmas Eve Potluck for SGC Personnel With No Better Options.

 

But there is something between them and the rest of their team, namely, a broken bridge and an 8,000 foot deep canyon.

 

With Jack at point, SG-1 had been in the midst of crossing a rickety old bridge from one edge of a canyon to another, a roaring river so far below that they couldn’t actually hear it roar. P5Y-521 had long ago been abandoned by the Goa’uld, and the kindly but simple people who lived there had no use for the Stargate and pretty much never walked the path or crossed the bridge between the town and the gate, even though it's only about 10 kilometers away. Jack had noted the poor condition of the bridge the first time they crossed it. He’d advised his team, as they prepared to cross it on their return journey, to be alert. 

 

Perhaps that’s why Daniel had taken the opportunity to stop and tighten the tie on his boot. Teal’c, who was bringing up the rear, had hung back with him. Jack was already more than halfway across, with Sam close behind, when he heard one of the ropes snap and felt the bridge sag beneath him and sway forward. “Captain, move!” he’d shouted to Sam as he threw himself at the other edge of the cliff. She’d scrambled behind him, and by some Christmas miracle, they’d both made it. But the bridge had not.

 

Daniel and Teal’c had doubled back to the village and been advised that there is another bridge about a day’s walk to the west that crosses the canyon and connects the village to their winter hunting grounds, and is therefore very well-maintained. Jack and Sam had walked back to the gate and reported their situation to the SGC. The canyon is too deep and the sandstone is too soft, which is why the canyon got so deep in the first place, for them to try rig up anything temporary to get the rest of SG-1 across, so it’s decided that they will walk to the west bridge.

 

It's absolutely unlikely, bordering on impossible, that Daniel and Teal’c will run into trouble on their journey over the next two days, and in fact much more likely that Jack’s knees will give out with that much walking. Somehow he’s always fine when he’s running for his life, but the goddamn endless walking gets him every time. Nonetheless, they leave no one behind. So here they are, on Christmas Eve, two identical campfires 30 yards and 8,000 feet apart from each other. They’re maintaining radio contact but there’s really not a lot to say, just a good night’s sleep to get before they start their trekking in the morning.

 

“I was supposed to have Christmas off this year,” Jack grouses, pacing back and forth. “I had plans.” Plans that involved sitting alone on his couch with a six-pack of beer. ’Tis the season for sulking, right? But he’d been looking forward to that beer.

 

“Better plans than Walter’s party, sir?” She smiles up at him from where she’s sitting on a rock by their fire and he’s caught off guard by the brightness in her eyes.

 

He shrugs. Beer alone on the couch seems like a much better plan to him, though he supposes it’s all a matter of perspective.

 

“I’ve got something that might make you feel better,” she says. She reaches into the inside pocket of her tak vest and pulls out a ziplock bag with four big, fat pieces of red licorice.

 

“Red vines?” 

 

“Uh huh.” She seems pleased with herself. “I thought that, just in case something happened, it would be nice to have something special."

 

“Red vines are something special?"

 

She frowns up at him, and he tries not to notice what a cute little pout she has. “They’re tasty and lightweight and easy to pack. Plus, they’re festive."

 

“Because they’re red?"

 

“Yeah. Red with little swirls.” He sees it, actually, the red twist like a candy cane that won’t snap and shatter like an actual candy cane would. It’s so like her, at least as far as he’s gotten to know her - just the right combination of kind of weird and spot on.

 

“Look,” she says, retracting the arm that had been holding out the ziplock bag. “I can easily eat all four of these myself. So if you’re not interested, so much the better for me."

 

“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.” He sits down next to her and she beams at him again, opens the bag and hands him a piece. The candy is chewy and sweet and tastes stale in the way red vines kind of always taste stale. It’s not bad, really. It’s kind of nice to eat something other than an MRE or a PowerBar.

 

Sam inelegantly tears off another bite of red vine with her teeth and leans back to look up at the sky. “I wonder if I’ll ever get used to seeing the galaxy from a different perspective,” she muses. “I know the night sky from Earth so well. Every time I look up at night on another planet, I have this split second of feeling completely disoriented before I remember that it’s supposed to be different."

 

“I know what you mean,” he says. He leans back and looks up too, chewing thoughtfully on his red vine.

 

“How long have you had the telescope on your roof?” she asks.

 

“Well,” he says, “I’ve only had the house for about a year and a half."

 

“Right,” she says quickly. Because prior to that, he lived in a different house with his wife and son. Sam seems sorry to have reminded him of that, as if he ever, for even a moment, could forget. She holds out a second red vine, which he accepts.

 

“I’ve had the telescope for a long time though,” he says. “Always kept it on the back porch or something. This is the first time I’ve had such a great spot for it."

 

“It is a great spot,” she agrees.

 

“How about you?"

 

“How about me what?"

 

“Have you ever had a telescope?"

 

“Oh,” she says. “No, I never had one. I did map out the constellations with glow-in-the-dark stars once on my bedroom ceiling.” She smiles at the memory. “I was very serious about making it as accurate as possible.” Jack doesn’t doubt that. "We moved so much that it was kind of a futile endeavor. But when we lived in San Diego when I was in high school, my dad used to take me to the observatory. You couldn’t see much with their telescope, all the light pollution, you know? But they had these gigantic maps of the stars and I just… I wanted that. I wanted to know them."

 

Jack can just imagine a teenaged Sam Carter, captivated by burning balls of gas hundreds and thousands and millions of light years away.

 

“I wanted to be an astronaut, actually,” she says.

 

“Oh yeah?"

 

“Yeah. That’s why I joined the Air Force. That’s the track I was on before I was recruited for Project Giza."

 

“Oh,” he says. He’s never really thought about her apart from the Stargate program. She seems so integral to the program, and it to her, that it’s strange to think she once had other ambitions.

 

She must think so too. “It’s funny to imagine how differently my life could’ve turned out,” she says with a chuckle, taking another bite of her red vine and chewing it slowly.

 

“Bet you never imagined you’d be visiting those stars you once stared at,” he says.

 

“Bet you didn’t either,” she replies, and he nods. “Honestly,” she continues, “every single day we do something I never could’ve imagined. Whenever I stop and think about it, really take stock of it all, it’s just…” she trails off, her eyes sparkling like the stars above. 

 

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. 

 

“See that one there?” She points straight up above them. “To the left of that cluster?"

 

“Uh huh."

 

“I think that’s Sirius."

 

“The dog star,” he says. “It’s just as bright from here as it is from Earth."

 

“Well, it’s a binary star,” she says, which he knows. “We’re on the other side of it here, and a little bit closer, only by a couple hundred light years."

 

They sit in silence for a while, finishing their red vines and looking for familiar stars in their alien configurations. 

 

“I’m sorry about your Christmas plans, sir,” she says with a sincerity of which his six-pack of beer is utterly unworthy.

 

“Nah,” he says. “I’ve had worse Christmases."

 

She nods and tucks the now-empty ziplock bag back into her tak vest. “All things considered,” she says, “this is really not so bad."

 

He has to agree with her there. "Merry Christmas, Carter," he says.

 

She grins at him briefly and then looks back up at the sky. "Merry Christmas, sir."


	2. Chapter 2

 

The second year they spend Christmas together, just the two of them, it’s also accidental, mostly. They have Cassie now, so Jack shelves his six-pack ambitions for a somewhat more traditional holiday affair. Officially, Cassie belongs to Janet, of course, but she also belongs to SG-1, a fact that Janet respects and accommodates. So the two Fraiser women will drive down to Santa Fe to see the rest of Janet’s family on Christmas Day, but on Christmas Eve, Cassie’s Stargate family will convene at Jack’s. Technically, this is Teal’c’s first Christmas too, since he mostly missed it last year.

 

Jack has forgone the Christmas turkey, which is way too much work, for a gigantic pot of Christmas chili. He’s got a whole array of toppings, cheese and onions and crackers and stuff, and a big pan of cornbread to go with it. Cassie and Janet brought Christmas cookies they’d baked. Sam has brought a salad with crunchy lettuce and tangy little red things in it, maybe dried cranberries,  along with something she’s calling thumbprint cookies, which she tells Cassie her mom used to make at Christmastime. They are pretty good, even if the name is weird. Daniel does his best to approximate a traditional Abydonian festival dish, with spiced meats wrapped in some kind of bread dough and arranged in what looks like a bundt pan. It’s not all that good, but it’s not all that bad. Jack resists the urge put ketchup on it.

 

And there’s alcohol. Daniel brought a couple bottles of wine, and so did Janet. Sam brought beer, probably figuring that everyone else would bring wine and knowing that Jack isn’t much of a wine drinker. His second-in-command is insightful like that. Jack has also made egg nog, a throwback to O’Neill Christmases long ago, when his mom always made it and his dad and uncles drank it in large quantities. Jack made a kid-friendly batch, which Cassie and Teal’c are both somewhat wary of at first, but then both decide they love. And he’s made an adult version, chock-full of rum, toward which Daniel gravitates like a moth to a flame.

 

Standing next to Jack, Sam chuckles to herself as they both watch Daniel refill his glass. “He’s not going to last long at this rate,” she says under her breath, and Jack smirks. Daniel is a happy drunk, a somehow even more enthusiastic than usual drunk, and most of all, a sleepy drunk.

 

They eat their chili and salad and cornbread off paper plates sitting in the living room on chairs and on the floor around the Christmas tree, the first Christmas tree he’s ever had in this house. He had to go to Walmart and buy a big package of generic ornaments, since he didn’t have any. It looks good though. He’s glad he went with colored lights, he thinks. And Cassie seems to love it, which is really the only thing that matters.

 

After dinner, they do Christmas cookies and presents for Cassie. SG-1 had decided ahead of time not to exchange gifts, for which Jack is grateful. He doesn’t need three more random trinkets, nor did he want to have to shop for three random trinkets for them. And everyone seems to have spent all their Christmas shopping energy on Cassie anyway. Jack got her some book from the bookstore that the salesperson said was popular with kids her age, about a wizard and a stone or something. The salesperson said it was the first in a series, so Jack figures if she likes it, he can just get her the next one for Christmas next year, and he’s set for a while. He also got her a matching hat, scarf and mitten set, and some toys for her dog too, since the dog was his fault.

 

Then Cassie distributes the presents she brought, identical rectangles, one for each member of SG-1. It’s a framed picture of the five of them, taken at her birthday party a couple months ago. This is a trinket Jack actually likes. He thanks her and gives her a hug and puts the framed picture on the mantel. Cassie beams proudly.

 

Janet and Cassie then do a round of hugs and goodbyes. They’ve got a lot of driving to do tomorrow and they need to get home and go to bed. Daniel does a round of hugs too before crawling into the passenger seat of his car with Teal’c at the wheel; no doubt he’ll be asleep by the time they back out of the driveway onto the street.

 

And then it’s just the two of them. 

 

Sam turns and looks at Jack and gives a small shrug. “I’ll help you clean up, sir,” she offers.

 

Clean-up won’t take long, the easy meal and paper plates have made sure of that, but Jack is all of a sudden really not looking forward to how empty his house will feel once everyone leaves. So he nods and follows her into the kitchen.

 

It takes less than five minutes to get the garbage thrown away and the glasses loaded in the dishwasher and the countertops wiped down. There’s some eggnog left, so Jack pours a glass for himself and for Sam, and they stand there in the kitchen, holding their glasses in silence.

 

Jack makes a decision. “Get your coat,” he says. “There’s something I want to show you."

 

Sam seems confused but does what he tells her to do, like she always does. With their coats and their mittens and their egg nog in hand, they go out on his back deck and climb the ladder to his rooftop deck. Sam was up there once, last year in the summer, when he gave her and Teal’c a “tour” of his place one team night. But she’s never been up there at night, and never actually used the telescope.

 

It’s not all that cold, really, considering how cold it can be at Christmas, and there’s no snow. Everything just looks dead and kind of dirty. But Sam’s eyes sparkle as she takes in the telescope, which Jack has just uncovered. 

 

“What do you want to see?” he asks. She beams and they spend the next hour searching for all the stars with planets that have Stargates. There aren’t all that many that you can see from Earth, but of course Sam knows them all.

 

Their egg nog is gone and it’s after 10 now, and it’s getting colder. They descend the ladder and go back inside through the side door off the ground-level deck. Sam leaves her coat on and looks at the front door. It’s time for her to go, but Jack is reluctant. The house is warm and the tree looks so festive and he’s not ready to let it go, not quite yet ready for his inevitable descent into melancholy.

 

“You want to play Scrabble?” he asks.

 

Sam looks taken aback. “Scrabble?"

 

“We used to stay up on Christmas Eve and play games.” He suddenly feels like an idiot, like he’s accidentally given her a glimpse of something way more personal than he had intended. But there’s no retreat now, it’s already out there. He clears his throat, which only makes it more awkward, and shifts on his feet. “I have other games too, if you don’t like Scrabble.” Might as well just go for it, at this point.

 

“I like Scrabble,” she says.

 

Of course she likes Scrabble. She kills him at Scrabble, actually. They take off their coats and hang them back up in the closet and Jack gets some beers and makes a bag of popcorn in the microwave, and she wipes the floor with him. Somehow all the words it looks like she made up are actual words, and none of the words that he made up are. Die Hard is on TV and it’s playing on mute in the background; Sam says it’s her favorite Christmas movie. After several rounds of Scrabble, they turn up the volume and sit back and watch the end of the movie. 

 

The movie is over and it’s after midnight now. “I should go,” she says.

 

“Yeah,” he says. Maybe it’s his imagination, but she seems reluctant too. He gets her coat and catches himself before he almost helps her into it.

 

“Bye, sir,” she says. “Merry Christmas."

 

“Merry Christmas, Carter.” He stands in the doorway and watches her go, then he turns back to face his house alone.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

The third year they spend Christmas together, just the two of them, it’s on purpose, even if it’s mostly incidental. 

 

Cassie is more comfortable with Janet’s family by now, and they’re spending the whole holiday together in Santa Fe, with promises to get together with all of SG-1 some time early in the new year.

 

Teal’c has learned that Sergeant Harriman’s Christmas Eve Potluck for SGC Personnel With No Better Options, which to be clear Sam has only ever heard Jack refer to as such, has morphed over the last two years into an Eating Christmas Cookies While Watching Star Wars Party, to absolutely no one’s surprise. This being exactly up Teal’c’s alley, he’s arranged to get a ride from Siler and will be joining the dozen or so other people on base who chose to celebrate the holiday this way.

 

As for Daniel, he’s just lost Sha’re, and over lunch two days before Christmas he declares in no uncertain terms that he will not be celebrating Christmas this year, and that furthermore, he would not welcome any attempts to cajole him into doing so. Sam and Jack look at each other, silently conferring and agreeing to respect his wishes. They don’t have Christmas on Abydos, obviously, but to whatever extent Christmas on Earth is about celebrating family and loved ones, they know it would be too painful for him, and way too soon. 

 

Daniel walks away, leaving Sam and Jack alone at the table. “So,” Jack begins. “How about you? Do you have Christmas off this year?"

 

“Yes, sir,” Sam replies. She’d volunteered to work, actually, but SG-1 is on stand down for the duration of Daniel’s bereavement leave, and though he’s been at work more than not, which Sam understands, they haven’t been going off-world. General Hammond told her to enjoy her time off and relax, which to her actually sounds somewhat stressful.

 

Jack nods absently. “Got any plans?"

 

Her heart flutters a tiny bit as she wonders if he’s gearing up to make an invitation. She’s been noticing a lot lately how regularly her CO makes her heart flutter, and she’s doing her best to tamp it down, but it’s an involuntary response, so she hasn’t been very successful. 

 

“Nope.” She does go see her brother Mark and his family in San Diego every year, but they do Christmas Day festivities with his wife’s family, and while Sam’s sister-in-law has always made it clear that she's welcome, Sam has never felt quite desperate enough for holiday family time to take them up on their offer. Instead, she flies out a couple days after Christmas and is usually there for her birthday, returning home around New Year’s.

 

“Well,” Jack says, "if you find yourself getting bored, I could really use your help with something tomorrow."

 

Her heart flutters again. This _is_ going to be an invitation. 

 

“Cassie’s coming over when she and Janet get back from Santa Fe. We’re supposed to do a Christmas movie night. But I haven’t had time to get my house looking very Christmas-y."

 

So he’s inviting her over for Christmas. Her. Just her. There’s a pretense, of course, and he’s being very careful to make the invitation on base, in public, so it can be interpreted as innocently as possible, by her and by anyone who might happen to notice them spending Christmas together. 

 

Or maybe it is innocent and he does just want some help and she’s way, way overthinking this.

 

“I’d be happy to help, sir,” she says.

 

“Good,” he says, leaning back in his chair casually, betraying nothing at all.

 

They make plans to meet up at his place the next day, Christmas Eve, after work and Sam gets up from the table to head back to her lab, carefully regulating her breathing so as not to reveal how excited she is.

 

On Christmas Eve, they meet up as planned and drive together in his truck to a Christmas tree lot that’s playing tinny Christmas music over crackly loudspeakers as the snow begins to flurry around them. Things at this point are pretty picked over, but, as Jack points out with delight, also pretty on sale. Most of the normal-sized trees are taken and what’s left are the really big ones, the really small ones, or the ones that look like they lost a fight. Jack is gravitating toward the small ones, but Sam grabs his arm and drags him to a big tree, a good-looking tree, but big.

 

He stands next to the tree and holds up his arm to measure it. “This won’t fit in my house,” he says. “Too tall."

 

“It’s not too tall,” she argues.

 

“Unless you’ve got plans I don’t know about to install a skylight, this tree is too tall,” he insists.

 

“You’ve got high ceilings,” she points out. 

 

“Not that high. Plus the stand adds six more inches."

 

“So we trim a little off the top.”

 

“A little?"

 

She shrugs. “I’m just thinking about Cassie here, sir."

 

He narrows his eyes at her. “Oh, don’t play the Cassie card."

 

“If your tree this year is smaller than last year’s, what will she think? I’d hate for her to be disappointed.” She bats her eyes innocently but she’s having a hard time not laughing.

 

“So every year’s got to be bigger? What the hell am I supposed to do next year?"

 

“You’ll have to decorate your yard, sir."

 

“No, Major, _you’ll_ have to decorate my yard,” he says, “because this tree is all your fault.” And she grins, because that means they’re getting the big tree. 

 

They swing by Sam’s place on their way back to pick up a couple extra strands of colored lights she’s not using, because Jack doesn’t have enough for a tree this size. When the get back to Jack’s, they wrangle the tree inside and prop it up. It’s way too tall. So they trim as much as they can off the top without making it look defective but it still doesn’t quite fit, so they take it back outside, break out Jack’s chain saw and trim six more inches off the bottom. This does the trick. They get the tree inside again and up in the stand.

 

“See?” she says with a smile. “Perfect fit.” It does look good, and it’ll look even better once they get the lights and ornaments on it. Sam’s always believed it’s best for a Christmas tree to take up as much space as possible, and this tree does exactly that.

 

He goes to the kitchen to grab a couple beers and call in their pizza order while Sam starts stringing the lights. She’s relieved that the evening is going so smoothly, and that her excitement/terror over his invitation hasn’t translated into any awkwardness between them. It’s helpful to have a specific task; they’ve always worked well together. She tries not to think too much about her Christmas lights on his Christmas tree in his house.

 

He comes back with the beers and tells her the pizza will be here in a half hour. He then sets about hanging the ornaments. “There’s no way this star is going to fit at the top,” he says.

 

“It doesn’t have to be at the _top_  of the top, sir,” she says. “You can just kind of lean it against the top branches."

 

Jack eyes her suspiciously. “I’m starting to think you’ve done this before.” And she can’t help the flush that spreads over her face, because she definitely has.

 

By the time the pizza arrives, they’ve mostly finished decorating, so they sit on the floor and polish off the pizza, along with a couple more beers. Now it’s almost 9:00, her work is done, the meal is done, and she wonders what happens next. Will he thank her and send her home? Will he ask her to stay and kick his butt at Scrabble again? She looks around the room. The tree really does look good.

 

“Hey,” he says, grabbing her empty plate and empty beer bottle. “I got you something."

 

“Oh,” she says. This is surprising. She’d assumed their “no presents” decision of last year still stood, and she definitely hadn’t gotten anything for him.

 

“Come on.” She stands up and follows him to the closet, where they get their coats, and then outside and up the ladder to his rooftop deck. There, sitting on one of the chairs, is a bag of red vines with a green bow taped on the top. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

 

A smile spreads across Sam’s face as she picks up the bag, a whole big bag, of red vines. “You remembered,” she says, because she feels like she needs to say something, and for the life of her, she can’t think of anything else to say.

 

He smirks, like he does. “I can honestly say that that was the only time in my entire career as an Air Force officer that a teammate has whipped out a zip lock bag of red vines."

 

Sam’s still grinning from ear to ear as she rips the bag open and hands him a vine, which he takes. She pulls out a second piece for herself and they both sit down in the deck chairs next to the telescope, which is still covered. She takes a bite of her red vine and looks up at the cloudy sky and sighs. It’s colder than it was last year, but still not too bad, and there’s a dusting of snow, but not much more. The intermittent flurries and clouds that have been gathering all day seem to suggest that more might be on the way.

 

“I was hoping the clouds would clear up, give us a chance to look around tonight,” he says.

 

“It’s alright,” she says. She likes just sitting up here, looking up through the trees and considering this wholly different perspective on the stars they’ve come to know so well, sitting next to one of the few people on the planet who shares the experience with her. It’s peaceful, and… nice. Really nice. 

 

Jack reaches over and grabs another red vine, waving it around in the air. “So what’s the deal with these things anyway?” He’s leaning forward, towards her, and looking at her intently.

 

“I told you,” she replies.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Festive and easy to pack, I remember. But what’s the deal really?"

 

Sam sighs and looks down at the bag in her lap. She doesn’t really want to be melancholy right now, but it’s funny how something as mundane as the packaging on this cheap candy licorice makes her heart ache, even all these years later.

 

“They were my mom’s favorite,” she says, more quietly than she’d intended. He doesn’t say anything, he just gives her space to continue if she wants, so she does. “She used to get them when we went camping, or went on a road trip, or if we were moving again and had to spend the whole day packing…” Sam closes her eyes at the sudden onslaught of memories. “They were a treat." Her treat. Jack is still quiet so Sam just keeps talking. “I actually always bring one with me when we go off-world.” She chances a look over at him and tries for a small smile.

 

“Seriously?” he asks, looking genuinely surprised.

 

“Yep. In a little bag. In case I need a pick-me-up."

 

“Just one?"

 

“Yep."

 

“Like if the goa’uld are chasing us and it’s got you down, you reach in your vest for a red vine?"

 

She chuckles. “Sorta like that."

 

“Wow,” he says. "But on Christmas, you brought four."

 

“Well, we weren’t supposed to be there on Christmas, and I figured if we still were, we’d probably all need a pick-me-up. That, and it seemed like on Christmas of all days, it would be cruel to eat candy without sharing."

 

Jack leans back in his chair. “So all that stuff about the red and the twists making it festive… you were just pulling that out of your ass?"

 

She laughs again, relieved and grateful that she can share this memory with him without a cloud of grief hanging heavily over the rest of their evening together like the clouds gathering in the sky above. “What can I say,” she says, nudging his arm with her elbow. “I learned from the best."

 

He narrows his eyes at her. “Careful, Major,” he says, but it only makes her burst out laughing, and he laughs too. Then he takes another bite of his red vine. “You know,” he says, tilting his head to the side and looking at it closely, “I honestly can’t decide whether or not I even like these things."

 

“I know!” Sam says, because for her, whether or not she likes them has always been inconsequential. It’s never about liking them. Still, sometimes, she wonders. 

 

“They’re so…” he begins.

 

“Stale,” she finishes.

 

“I did think that,” he says.

 

“And too sweet,” she says, taking another bite of hers. 

 

“I don’t have a problem with sweet,” he says, and she believes him. She’s seen how he can eat cake. “It’s just that they’re…” he trails off with a shrug and scowls at his red vine before taking another bite.

 

“Yeah,” she says, and she shrugs too, and together they knock off a couple more red vines under the cloudy Colorado skies on Christmas Eve. 

 

After a while they head back inside and Sam, feeling emboldened, makes a move. “Scrabble?” she says.

 

“I was thinking Monopoly,” he says.

 

“I’m terrible at Monopoly,” she admits.

 

“Good,” he says. “I don’t believe you, but good."

 

Jack puts on a radio station that’s playing Christmas music and makes some coffee while Sam gets the game set up. They play and talk for hours by the light of the Christmas tree, and when she finally looks at her watch as they’re wrapping up a round, she’s shocked to see that it’s after two. Funny, she’s never really enjoyed playing Monopoly before.

 

“I should go,” she says, just like she said a year ago, but this year there’s that flutter in her heart that wasn’t quite so pronounced last time.

 

It takes him a little bit longer than it did last year to nod and say “yeah” and stand up to go get her coat, and she’d give just about anything to know what he’s thinking, what he’s thinking about her. Because what she’s thinking about him is starting to coalesce and take shape, and while it terrifies her the vast majority of the time, tonight, in the warm glow of the Christmas lights in the wee hours of Christmas morning, it feels warm and safe and wonderful.

 

“Thanks,” he says, as he hands her her coat. She must look confused, because he clarifies, “for helping with the tree."

 

“Oh,” she says. “Right.” It seems like such a long time ago. “I’m sure Cassie will love it,” she says.

 

He looks at her then and smiles, a real smile that spreads across his whole face, lighting up his deep brown eyes, and it _does_ things to her that she cannot quantify, and all of a sudden she’s back to feeling terrified, because she’s definitely falling in love with him, and that is very, very bad.

 

“Merry Christmas, Carter,” he says. God, his voice. She has to go. Now.

 

“Merry Christmas, sir.” She stares at him for a moment longer before turning and scurrying off to the relative safety of her cold little car. 


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth year they spend Christmas together, just the two of them, it’s undeniably on purpose.

 

They’re fresh off of P3R-118, after a couple months-long stint as mind-stamped slave laborers on a planet in the middle of an ice age. They got home just in time for Christmas, of course, and while Jack was starting to get kind of attached to some of the new Christmas traditions that have emerged in his life over the last few years, right now, it’s all just way too overwhelming.

 

His instinct is to pull back and retreat from everything, particularly in the face of this holiday, but he’s also desperate, desperate for her. She’s the only one he recognizes, the only thing that makes any sense to him. She has the power to anchor him to wherever and whoever he is supposed to be, and honestly, he’s still having trouble sorting all that out.

 

He bursts into her lab, one week after they returned from 118 and one day before Christmas Eve, and he’s got a terrible idea. And there’s just enough of Jonah left in him that he actually says it out loud. 

 

“What if we took Christmas off this year?”

 

She blinks at him. Of course they _have_ Christmas off. The whole team is on stand down until Fraiser and McKenzie both are fully satisfied that they haven’t accidentally gone insane, and that might take a while. The only reason they’re on base now, working half days, is so that people can keep an eye on them. But this isn’t what he’s talking about.

 

She’s still not saying anything, but he’s feeling a buzz of desperation at the base of his skull and he’s afraid it’s going to explode. “You’re coming over for Christmas, right?” It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not even do that.

 

She blinks again. “Sir, I’m not sure that’s such a -"

 

But he cuts her off. “Let’s take Christmas off. Please.” He knows he sounds desperate, but he is desperate, that’s the whole point of this conversation right now.

 

She narrows her eyes, which seems better than the blinking, because at least she’s thinking about what he just said, even if she seems to be of the opinion that he makes no sense. 

 

“You know how we always…” he tries, but falters. “How we can’t ever…” he waves his hand back and forth between them and then sighs and stops. They can’t touch each other, not casual touches, not even like he’d touch the guys. They can’t look at each other for too long, for fear someone will think they’re gazing. They’ve had to stop bantering so it’s not misinterpreted as flirting, so it won’t accidentally become flirting. They have to be sure not to be caught always immediately noticing when the other walks into a room. They have to not light up when they hear the other’s voice. Ever since the zat’arc machine thing, and even before then, they’ve had to be so damn careful. It’s unbearable. It’s unsustainable. And right now, in the immediate wake of the mind stamp, when Jack literally does not know who he is sometimes, it’s just about impossible.

 

He tries again. “What I mean is, maybe we could stop pretending we don’t care about each other. Just for one day."

 

There it is, his terrible idea. Her jaw goes slack and her eyes go wide, and she's blinking again, but at least she hasn’t left the room, or shot him, or something like that.

 

Finally, she speaks. “We can’t do that, sir."

 

There’s that damn “sir” again. He hates it. “I don’t know if I can not do it anymore,” he says, and she’s back to narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m not propositioning you here, Carter,” he says with exasperation. “I can’t tell what I’m feeling or remembering or forgetting or repressing or what. And it’s driving me insane. I can’t pretend right now. I just want to spend Christmas doing what we did last year, but, like, if we wanted to hold hands, we could hold hands."

 

She says nothing. She seems frozen, perhaps catatonic. Maybe she was as much on the brink as he is and now here he’s pushed her over the edge.

 

“Shit, Carter, I’m sorry. Look, forget I said anything, forget -"

 

“I want that,” she says. She’s looking at him intently. “I really want that."

 

“You do?” He can’t quite believe she replied at all.

 

“I’ve always wanted that."

 

“Oh. Ok. So, ok? Let’s do it? Tomorrow?"

 

“But will it make things worse?"

 

“Can it get any worse than this?” he asks, throwing his hands up in the air. “Because at this point I’m willing to try something new.”

 

She nods earnestly in response, like she needed him to talk her into it, and he just did. “Ok,” she says. “Tomorrow."

 

Tomorrow comes and he’s honestly not sure she’s going to show. He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. But at 1600 his doorbell rings, and there she is, in jeans and a parka and snow boots, because it’s been snowing since before noon. 

 

“Hey,” she says with a tentative smile. She looks a little nervous.

 

“Hey,” he replies. They stand there for a moment, looking at each other across the threshold, until he realizes she’s waiting for him to invite her in. “Oh,” he says. Maybe he’s nervous too. “Hang on, let me grab my coat. I want to get to the lot before the roads get any worse."

 

Sam nods and Jack grabs his coat and hat, and they get seated in his truck. He starts the engine and looks at her, and he really, really wants to lean over the console and kiss her. Her cheeks and nose are red from the cold and her eyes are blue like the winter sky and there are snowflakes stuck to her eyebrows and she looks so beautiful. But it’s been all of three minutes since they began this grand experiment in taking Christmas off, and he really doesn’t want to freak her out, so he turns back to the wheel and pulls out of the driveway and heads to the Christmas tree lot.

 

Once there, Sam leads them straight to the big trees. There will be no messing around with the small trees this year. Sam finds one she likes and points and smiles. Making her smile feels good, it feels right. It’s the first thing that’s felt really right in the week since they got back from the ice planet. If she wants this tree, he’ll get her this tree. He’ll get her ten trees just like this. But he’s still going to give her a hard time about it. 

 

He steps next to the tree and holds up his hand. “Too tall,” he says, shaking his head.

 

“Stop it,” she says, hitting him playfully on the arm. “You forget, I am much more intimately familiar with the height of your ceiling than I was at this time last year.” He really likes the idea of her being intimately familiar with anything of his, even his ceiling height. She steps up next to him and holds up her own hand. “I say it’s perfect.”

 

The look she gives him dares him to defy her, and he really, really wants to kiss her. But instead he grabs her hand, the one that’s still up in the air, and laces their fingers together. He hears her breath catch, even though they’re both wearing gloves. She looks down at their hands in amazement.

 

They pay for the tree and load it in the truck and drive back to his place. He helps her out of her coat, to her obvious surprise, because that’s something he’s never dared to try before. The tree needs a little trimming down, but they don’t have to break out the chain saw this year to make it fit in the stand. He pours her a glass of wine, because she is a wine drinker, even if he’s not, and he grabs a beer for himself. Then he lights a fire in the fireplace while she strings the lights - hers are still here, she never did bring them home last year. When the fire is crackling, he gets to work on the ornaments. And if they brush up against each other once or twice as they both move around the tree, well, no one could fault them. And no one will fault them. They won’t even fault themselves. Because they’re taking Christmas off this year.

 

They stand together looking at the tree when they’re done. “Next year, you should bring some of your own ornaments over,” he says.

 

“Hm,” she says, taking a sip of her wine. “Next year.”

 

Dinner this year is not pizza. It’s steak, and steak cooked the way god intended: on a grill. Jack’s got a gas-powered grill out on his deck, so it heats up quickly, and he puts the meat on. He'd made a side salad ahead of time and roasted some potatoes but the steaks are huge, they don’t need much of anything by way of sides. Sam steps outside with him when he goes out to flip the steaks and she leans her hip against the railing of the deck, watching him. It’s still snowing, thought it seems to be lightening up. The snow is landing on her hair and on her wine glass and on the patch of skin above the neckline of her blue sweater.

 

“I love the snow,” she says, gazing upward.

 

“You really should come up to the cabin with me sometime,” he says, “if you like snow. We’ve got a lot."

 

“You know why I can’t,” she says, looking back at him.

 

“Yeah. I know."

 

“Still. I bet I would love it."

 

“You would,” he says. “I know it."

 

He closes the lid on the grill. The steaks only need a couple more minutes. People joke about how he chars meat, but he would never, ever overcook a steak. He steps over to her and puts his hands on her arms and she shivers, maybe from the cold, maybe not. “Next year?” she asks, looking up at him with a sad smile.

 

“You bet,” he says softly.

 

He wants to kiss her and for a second he thinks he just might, but then she leans forward and lays her head against his shoulder, so he wraps his arms around her and they stay like that for two minutes, until the steaks are done and it’s time to take them off the grill.

 

“We’re not going to _eat_ outside, are we?"

 

Jack laughs and grabs her hand, pulling her back into the house. They eat on the couch, facing the tree, so they can admire their handiwork, but they do at least use real plates and forks and knives. The steaks are perfect, the conversation is easy, and Jack doesn’t feel one ounce of guilt that this feels like a date, like a really good date. Their hands touch, casually and otherwise. They look and they gaze. They banter and they flirt. He feels lighter and saner than he’s felt since before they ever set foot on P3R-118, since way before then, if he’s being honest with himself. Her initial nervousness is long gone, and so is his. He'd thought it would be harder to overcome years of acting like they didn’t care about each other, but it’s easy, it’s so easy.

 

Dinner is over and he refills her wine and tells her to stay put on the couch for a second. He makes a couple quick preparations and comes back for her, handing her her snow boots and helping her into her jacket. The snow has stopped now, the skies are clearing, and it’s cold. He leads the way up the ladder to his rooftop deck.

 

“Oh, wow,” she says softly. 

 

Jack has strung a short strand of battery-powered Christmas lights around the railing of the deck. There’s a pile of blankets, a large thermos of coffee, and a bag of red vines sitting on what Jack has come to think of as her chair. There’s a fresh blanket of snow covering the railing, the roof, the ground and the trees. Jack thankfully had the foresight to cover the chairs with a tarp, which he’d removed just before bringing Sam up here, so they’re dry. The small amount of heat the Christmas lights emit has melted tiny caves around each bulb, and the lights themselves are making each little cave glow. It’s not something he could’ve planned, but the effect is pretty nice. “It’s starting to clear up," he says, stepping past her and uncovering the telescope. He holds out a red and brown flannel blanket. “We might be able to see something tonight."

 

She’s still looking awestruck at his little set-up, and he’s immensely proud of himself for putting that look on her face. He nudges her arm and drapes the blanket over her shoulders. They’re standing close now, really close, and face to face.

 

“Can I kiss you?” he asks in a whisper. He feels fairly confident at this point that she would be ok with it, but he really, really doesn’t want to mess this up.

 

“You better,” she says, leaning in.

 

She presses her lips against his lips and her chest against his chest and she brings her hands up to his face. It’s nothing they haven’t done before as Jonah and Thera, but it’s _them_ , Jack and Sam, in full possession of their mental capacities, standing on planet Earth on Christmas Eve, kissing.

 

Then he opens his mouth and feels her tongue on his as her hands slide down his face, down his neck, down his sides to wrap around his waist and pull him closer to her, and now Jack and Sam are making out, on Earth on Christmas Eve, in full possession of their mental capacities, though Jack feels his starting to slip, in the best way possible.

 

Eventually they break apart and rest their foreheads together, breathing heavily, their breath puffing little clouds into the air around them. “Oh my god,” Sam says finally. “Jack."

 

“Yeah,” he says, pressing one more kiss to her forehead.

 

They sit down in their spots and she pulls her blanket more tightly around her shoulders, grabbing a second one to drape across her lap. She scoots her chair over, as close to his as possible. Jack opens the thermos and pours them each a steaming cup of coffee as she rips open the bag of red vines. 

 

“I didn’t even notice you making coffee,” she muses.

 

“I made it before you got here,” he says. “This thermos will keep it steaming hot for 24 hours, even sitting out here in the snow. It’s amazing.” 

 

She chuckles and takes a sip of her coffee. “You love your gadgets."

 

He makes a face. “I do not."

 

“Yes, you do,” she insists. “You just don’t like alien gadgets."

 

He’s willing to concede that point. And more than that, he loves how it feels that she knows things about him.

 

She passes him a red vine and leans back in her chair, then sits up again. “Why are my feet warm?” she asks.

 

“Hot bricks,” he says with a grin.

 

“Hot bricks?” she repeats.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “When we used to go to the cabin in the winter when I was a kid, my grandparents would put bricks in the stove, and then at bedtime, they’d wrap one up in a towel and put it under the blanket at the foot of the bed to keep my feet warm.” There’s probably an actual term for this practice, but he doesn’t know what it is. They always called them hot bricks. He's put one at the foot of each of their chairs and one in the pile of blankets he’d set out to keep everything warm.

 

“Huh,” she says. “I didn’t realize your cabin was so… rustic."

 

He chuckles and takes a sip of his coffee, enjoying the way it warms his insides and makes his breath puff extra dense in the cold night air. The red vines have their own value, but they’ve been sitting out in the cold and require even more chewing than usual.

 

“It’s not. I mean, it is, but not like that. Even when I was a kid, it was pretty updated. But my grandparents lived there for decades, since they first got married, and back then, it was… it was rustic.” Sam takes another sip of her coffee and settles into her chair a bit, so he continues with his story. “My grandma used to talk about the first year of their marriage, how they didn’t have much and it was so cold, much colder than usual, even for northern Minnesota. The snow would pile up over the windowsills. They had a wood-buring stove but they didn’t get up in the night to stoke the fire, they didn’t have enough wood for that. She said they’d wake up every morning with frost on their bed."

 

“Wow,” Sam says. “That’s cold."

 

“She told me they had a pet canary that didn’t make it through the winter. They put his cage right next to the stove at night and covered it with a heavy blanket but they woke up one morning and he was dead, frozen to his perch."

 

Sam frowns. “Where’d they get a pet canary?” she asks.

 

“I don’t know,” he admits. He’s actually never wondered that before. To him it was perfectly normal that his northern Minnesotan grandparents in their very rustic cabin with barely enough resources for firewood and food would have a pet canary. It was part of the story. “Maybe it was a poorly thought-out wedding present?"

 

“Hmm,” she considers this. “That’s… kind of a depressing story, you know.” Sam grimaces slightly at him.

 

“It is,” he agees. “But it’s funny, when I was a kid, it took me a long time to realize what a depressing story that was. Because when my grandma told it, she never seemed upset about the bird. She seemed proud that they survived, that they were so tough, that they made the cabin their own, and the land around it, and that all these years later, she could tell me the tale."

 

Sam smiles.

 

“They had central heating by the time I was a kid. The stove is still there, but you can heat the cabin without it. The hot bricks were just for fun."

 

“You and your grandma were close."

 

“Yeah,” he says. “We were.” Then he takes a breath and forces the next words out: “She and Charlie were really close too.” It’s one thing to touch and gaze and flirt and make out on planet Earth in full possession of their mental capacities, but it’s quite another thing to be intimate in this way. But he wants this too. With her, he wants it all.

 

She’s quiet for a moment, then she reaches over to take his hand, and takes another sip of her coffee. “Did you guys get up to the cabin very often?"

 

“Oh yeah,” Jack says, bracing himself for the wave of nostalgia that inevitably hits. “I mean, we went as often as we could. Not enough.” It's never enough, is it? “A few times a year, maybe, four or five? But I think Charlie felt like it was a part of him, like I did at his age."

 

Sam asks more questions about Charlie, about his grandma and grandpa, about the cabin. He finds it’s not as hard to talk about these things as he thought it might be, not when it’s her he’s talking to, and that after a while, it actually feels really good. They talk about Christmases past, good ones and bad ones. He asks about her brother and his wife, about her niece and nephew, about her mom. With every story told and memory shared, he feels more and more like Jack O’Neill again, a whole, integrated person, and less and less like a memory stamp. A couple hours pass and the sky clouds over, a gentle snow beginning to fall again. They haven’t done any stargazing, the coffee is long gone, and the hot bricks are cold. They’re really only meant to be a temporary solution anyway.

 

They descend the ladder make their way back to the living room. He’s a little bit worried that the spell will be broken now that they’ve left the rooftop deck, so he puts a few more logs on the fire to make things extra cozy. “You want to play something?” he asks.

 

She shrugs. “I’m not really in the mood for games right now,” she says, and wow, does she mean what he thinks she means? Because he told her he wanted to do what they did last year plus hand-holding, but he really liked the making out, and he’d be very, very happy with even more than that.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Can I get you some more wine?"

 

“Hm,” she says. “Maybe beer?"

 

He goes to the kitchen and retrieves the beers and a plate of Christmas cookies he’d picked up at the store yesterday, and when he comes back to the living room, she’s sitting on the couch, munching on a red vine, gazing at the tree. _Their_ tree. “Christmas movie maybe?” she suggests.

 

He sits down next to her and grabs the remote. To Sam’s dismay, none of the channels he gets are playing Die Hard, but they settle eventually on Christmas Vacation. They’ve only missed the first ten minutes and they’ve both seen it multiple times before. They’re sitting so close their legs are touching, something they’ve never done before, ever. 

 

Before long they’re verifiably cuddling, right there on his couch on planet Earth, watching Clark Griswold make some truly terrible life choices in the name of Christmas. The Christmas tree lights are shining down on them and the fire is crackling and when he runs his hand up and down her arm, she sighs happily. He kisses her shoulder and she closes her eyes and hums.

 

The movie ends and she sits up. “I should go,” she says, looking dejected, or maybe that’s just him.

 

He freezes. He knows what he usually says. But they’re taking this Christmas off, and he doesn’t want her to go. “We could watch another movie."

 

“Ok,” she quickly agrees. This station is just replaying Christmas Vacation, and it’s a good movie, but not that good, so they flip to another station that’s halfway into A Christmas Story, which they’ve also both seen before. She settles back down on the couch and he settles behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist.

 

After a while she whispers, “I don’t want this Christmas to end.”

 

Jack knows the feeling. “I was thinking,” he says into her hair, “this should be part of our tradition. Stargazing and red vines and steak, definitely steak, and we can… take Christmas off.” He brushes her hair off her face and kisses her temple.

 

She turns on the couch to face him, and they’re both still laying down, their bodies pressed together. “So next year? For real?"

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Next year, for real.” _This year, next year, every year._ He looks deeply into her eyes and tries to convey reassurance without any pressure. It’s a tricky balance.

 

“Can we make it til next year?” It’s not a question of whether they can go back to being Colonel and Major, commander and second. They have to do that anyway, after the mind stamp on the ice planet. They’ve been having to do that for some time, really.

 

_I can make it as long as you need me to,_  he wants to say, but he thinks that might tip his tricky balance too far in the direction of pressuring her, so he tries for casual. “Everyone looks forward to Christmas, Carter. Every year. And they all survive."

 

She smiles, and he knows he’s played it just right. “I’ll be counting down the days,” she says. He leans in to kiss her then, and she kisses him back, deeply, lying there on the couch while Ralphie nearly shoots his eye out on the TV. Jack wants so badly to slip his hand up the front of her shirt and feel the bare skin beneath her soft blue sweater, but he’s letting her set the pace and she’s keeping her hands above the clothes, so he will too. And it’s not problem, because for all the desire this stirs up in him, he’s also profoundly satisfied to be kissing her at all, profoundly grateful, and honestly still kind of in shock about it. 

 

The movie, which they haven’t really been watching, ends, and they break apart and she sits up, runs a hand through her hair and sighs. “I’m going to go home now,” she says. She looks rumpled and sleepy and completely beautiful.

 

“Alright,” he says.

 

He walks her to the door and helps her into her coat, kissing her one last time. His hand lingers on her cheek and she leans into it, smiling up at him. Her own hand rests on his chest. “Merry Christmas, Jack."

 

“Merry Christmas, Sam.”

 

She walks out the door and his heart is in his throat, but as he turns back to his house, so festive and so warm and so Christmas-y, he also feels a solid sense of being ok. He doesn’t want her to go home, he doesn’t want to go back to the way things were, but he thinks now that he can survive it, at least until next Christmas.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NB this fic is now rated M. Merry Christmas to all. ;-)

The fifth year they spend Christmas together, just the two of them, there is sex. Finally.

 

Sam knows what she wants this year. She wanted it last year too, she’s wanted it for years, really. But last year, after they returned from P3R-118, she felt like she had been broken into a million pieces, and like those pieces were floating around in the air above her head, following her from room to room and place to place, but never making any sense. To say she was disoriented would be a severe understatement. Then she and Jack had taken Christmas off together, and slowly over the course of their evening and early morning, she felt all her pieces fit back together where they belonged. She’d felt like herself. She’d felt whole. And she'd wanted him then, but she wasn’t quite ready yet to lose control of the self she’d only just re-collected. 

 

So she’d chosen to kiss him goodnight and go home, and almost immediately regretted it. And she’s been waiting all year for Christmas to come around again so she can make a different choice. 

 

And what a year it’s been. There was Osiris, and there was Orlin. Teal’c got brainwashed and they were attacked by Replicators. She was possessed by an entity and Jack shot and killed her, almost. And just a couple weeks ago, she was kidnapped and almost killed again, this time by boring old earthlings. Oh, and she’d blown up a sun. An actual sun. That feels like kind of a big deal.

 

Through it all, she’s held it together by clinging to the promise of Christmas. It carried her through. And she hasn’t risked so much as a meaningful glance at Jack about it, but she knows, knows in her heart, that it's carried him through too.

 

So this year, they don’t even bother with a pretense for their friends. Teal’c’s got his own Christmas tradition now with Walter and the gang, and Daniel does nothing, which he seems to prefer. Sam feels a little guilty about abandoning him, but not guilty enough to abandon her own plans. Plus, Janet has invited SG-1 to join her and Cassie for a New Year’s Day brunch at their house again this year, so it’s not like they’re ignoring their team for the entirety of the holiday season.

 

It’s Christmas Eve. Sam dresses herself in something that will make Jack's eyes pop, a short dress that’s tight with long sleeves and a very low neckline. It’s black and a little bit shimmery. She got it years ago for a New Year’s Eve wedding she had to go to, and she knows she looks good in it. She knows how other men have looked at her when she’s worn this dress. She can’t wait to see that look on Jack. She packs a bag and takes a cab to his place.

 

He opens the door before she even rings the bell, like he’s been standing there waiting for her all day, though most likely, he probably just heard the cab idling while she paid her fare. She’s on him before the door is fully closed behind them. Her hands are on his face and she’s kissing him, and he’s kissing her back, and then he’s pushing her up against the barely-closed door, pressing his body against hers, and she sighs happily into his mouth, feeling herself melt into him. This, this is what she’s been waiting all year for. This.

 

“Did you count down the days?” he says, laying soft kisses now on her her temple, her forehead, her nose, her chin.

 

“Oh yeah,” she says, “since about an hour after I left last Christmas."

 

He grins. She’s still got her coat on, and he reaches to unzip it, a gesture that sends a rush of desire through her whole body. He slips the jacket off her shoulders and gives a low whistle. 

 

“Wow,” he says. He’s giving her a long, slow once-over, something they’re definitely not allowed to do any other day of the year. He’s practically drooling. Sam is extraordinarily pleased with herself. “I’m underdressed,” he says. "I should change."

 

“No,” Sam says, and with the confidence of a woman who’s just recently blown up a sun, she adds, “but you should take off your clothes."

 

He practically growls as he lays into her again, and now that her coat is gone, now that she’s made her intentions for the evening pretty clear, his hands are everywhere, on her face, on her arms, on her hips, grazing her breasts and palming her ass. She feels like she’s on fire, and she’s still fully dressed.

 

That’s about to change though, because his hands, which had very recently been caressing her backside, have moved down to the hem of her really quite short dress, and have started pulling it up. His lips never leave hers, but her dress is soon up over her waist, and now there’s nothing between his hands and her ass but some very thin black lace panties. She can feel how hard he is already through his pants.

 

He pauses now and takes a step back, unabashedly admiring the view as both of them breathe heavily. She can practically see on his face the battle he’s waging within, because it would be so easy and so, so good for him to just take her here, up against the front door, hard and fast and desperate and perfect. But she sees in his eyes the second he decides to forgo instant gratification for only slightly delayed gratification. His face softens and he breaths out and his hand runs down her arm to snag her fingers, and he pulls her down the hall to his bedroom.

 

Maybe they can revisit the front door idea another time.

 

She’s never been in his bedroom before, but she doesn’t have any time now for a look around, because he’s standing behind her unzipping her dress and her brain is short-circuiting. All she can actually think about is getting his clothes off. She turns around once he’s done with her zipper and she reaches for his belt as he runs his hands gently along her neckline, pushing her dress down reverently. His hands cup her breasts through her black lace bra and he seems so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t notice that she’s got his pants undone until she thrusts a hand down his shorts and grasps him firmly, stroking him from base to tip.

 

“Jesus, Sam,” he breathes.

 

“I want you,” she says in return.

 

There’s nothing more to say, so she puts her mouth to better use, kissing him deeply while their hands work to undress each other, bit by bit. Soon they’re both naked and she’s so, so wet and very, very ready. And when he pushes into her for the first time, she cries out, because it’s perfect, and she’d been worried that it might feel wrong, or that she might feel guilty, but all she feels is wonderful as he starts to move above her, slowly at first, and then faster, harder, deeper. She urges him on with her hands and her legs and her hips, and it’s like he can read her mind, and maybe after all these years, he can, because he’s hitting every spot, every time, just right. They’re so perfectly in sync as teammates, and she shouldn’t be surprised that they’re perfectly in sync as lovers too.

 

When she comes, her entire vast, expansive universe explodes, and it’s never been this good before, not ever, and he follows right behind, drawing out her pleasure as he empties himself into her. She’s whimpering, she can’t believe it, and he’s stroking her hair, whispering something sweet and soft into her ear, maybe her name? She’s not sure. But when he shifts his hips to pull out, she wraps her arm tightly around him and says, “Stay, please,” and he does.

 

They lay like that for a while longer, she honestly had no idea how long. She hadn’t known her body was capable of feeling like this. And now she feels vulnerable and safe at the same time, empty and full, shattered and whole, utterly complete. Their breathing slows and he slips out of her, settling at her side and pulling her into his arms.

 

“I knew we’d be good at that,” he says, and she hums, running her fingers up and down his bare back.

 

“That was better than good,” she says.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”

 

He closes his eyes and kisses her forehead and breathes deeply, and for a moment she’s afraid he might fall asleep. But his hands begin their meandering again, this time hitting not just the highlights but being very deliberate and thorough in their exploration of her entire body, her wrists, her hands, her stomach, her sides, her shoulders, her back, her legs, her feet, her ankles. All of his touching, and the gentle but deliberate kisses that go with it, get her all worked up again, and she hadn’t thought she could possibly come again so soon, but when his hands and lips meet the the part of her that wants him most at the apex of her thighs, she realizes she can, and will.

 

Eventually, they get hungry. “How about that steak?” Jack asks.

 

Unfortunately, they need to get dressed to go outside and operate the grill in the snow. Jack pulls on some sweat pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt; Sam also dons a pair of Jack’s sweat pants and a hooded sweatshirt. She’d packed her own things to sleep in, as much as she’d actually planned on sleeping naked, but she prefers to wear his things if that’s an option. And the dress she wore over here has definitely fulfilled its purpose.

 

The steaks grill up quickly; she tucks herself into him as they wait and he wraps his arms tightly around her. It’s snowing pretty heavily, actually. She loves the smell of the snow melting on the lid of the hot grill, she loves the sound of the sizzling meat, she loves the quiet thickness of the winter air. And she loves, loves his arms so tight around her.

 

The side salad and potatoes are a repeat of last year, which is more than fine by her. He retrieves wine for her and beer for him from the kitchen, and they settle in on the couch. “Oh,” he says. “we forgot to get a tree.”

 

“I wouldn’t say we forgot,” she says, thoughtfully chewing and swallowing a bite of her steak, which is cooked perfectly. “I’d just say that we had different priorities."

 

“I’m glad our priorities are so well-aligned,” he says, sipping his beer.

 

“I’ve always admired your proficiency in prioritization,” she grins.

 

“Yes, well,” he sips his beer again, “I do pride myself on how I prioritize all the very best priorities."

 

She laughs then, and he grabs a bite of potato off her plate; he's finished his own already. She hits his thieving fork with hers and he kisses her on the cheek and she laughs. 

 

“Still,” he says, “I always did like the tree."

 

Sam gets an idea. Really, it was an idea she had years ago, but it’s only just now become necessary. They finish up their dinner, and go to the basement to dig out a couple long, heavy-duty extension cords. They don their boots and coats and run a line from the outlet on the deck to one of the evergreen trees in Jack’s backyard. The tree is bigger than the trees Sam has made him get the last couple years, so she strings the lights a little thinner and it works. Jack has to actually climb the tree to get the star on top. They don’t bother with the other ornaments. They plug the lights in and the tree sparkles triumphantly, colorful and perfect in the heavily-falling snow. Jack kisses her then, and Sam decides that if somehow she were to die right now, she would die a very, very happy person.

 

They walk back to the house hand-in-hand, but Sam uses the hand not holding his to grab a clump of snow off a bush as they walk past, and she reaches over and quickly stuffs it down the back of his coat. He shouts, she laughs, and he retaliates with snowballs of his own, and soon they’re both covered in snow, inside their clothes and out, and laughing together as they trudge through the soft white winter landscape.

 

When they get back inside, they take off their wet coats and wet boots and all their wet clothes and spread them out in front of the fireplace to dry, and they have sex on the couch while the fire roars and warms everything back up. Sam doesn’t think she’s ever had this much sex in one night and it’s only just after 9.

 

Their clothes are dry now, mostly, so they get dressed again and Jack drapes the last string of lights, the battery-powered ones he had up on the rooftop deck last year, around the fireplace mantle to give the room a festive glow. With all this snow, they won’t bother going up to the roof tonight anyway. Then he heads back to the kitchen and emerges a few minutes later with more drinks, a bowl of popcorn, and a bag of red vines tucked under his arm. “Movie?” he says.

 

“Oh!” Sam says, remembering suddenly. “I got you a present.” She dashes up the couple of steps to his front door where she’d dropped her bag so unceremoniously all those hours ago.

 

She’s got three boxes, large, medium and small. She instructs him to open the large box first; it’s a DVD player. He raises his eyebrows at her and she grins and tells him to open the small box next. It’s his very own copy of Die Hard, the best Christmas movie of all time, on DVD. In the final box is the complete first season of the Simpsons on DVD. He smiles as he looks over his new toys. “You’re going to install this, right?” he says.

 

“Of course I’m going to install it, that’s part of the present,” she says, and she leans in to kiss him, just because she can. His hands go instantly to her breasts, and she moans a little, because she hasn’t bothered putting her bra back on and this sweatshirt is kind of thin.

 

“I didn’t get you anything,” he whispers in her ear, and when she pulls back, he’s looking contrite.

 

“Jack,” she says. She loves so much being able to use his first name. “I didn’t get you a present because I wanted you to buy me one. I gave you a present so that for the next 364 days, you can have something here in your house to make you happy and remind you of our Christmas together.” And she means it too. She doesn’t need any presents from him. She’s so profoundly happy with what she’s got, and incredibly pleased at how his eyes lit up when he saw that Simpsons DVD.

 

“Ok,” he says. “In that case, I want you to keep the sweats."

 

“The sweats?” she says.

 

“Yeah.” He motions at what she’s wearing, his sweat pants and sweatshirt. They’re nondescript, the pants gray and the sweatshirt black, but they’re worn and soft, and at the moment, they kind of smell like sex. “Something for you to keep in your house to remind you of our Christmas together.” 

 

She jumps into his lap and throws her arms around his neck. “I think this is the best Christmas present I ever got,” she says, and he laughs and tickles her sides.

 

Sam installs the DVD player and they do indeed watch Die Hard while also making out on the couch. When the movie is over, they’re both surprised to find they’re in the mood for some games, so they spread a blanket on the floor in front of the fire and play a round of Scrabble while working through a few more red vines.

 

“I’ve decided I love these, by the way,” Jack grins, waving his red vine around in the air. 

 

Sam cleans up at Scrabble, then Jack wins a round of Monopoly and Sam throws the board to the side, crawling across the blanket and pushing him onto his back. She kisses him soundly, grinding her hips against his until he’s as hard as she is wet, then she pulls down his pants and her own and takes him inside her, riding him hard until they both cry out together, his hands grasping at her and her head thrown back in pleasure. They fall asleep on the blanket in front of the fire as it dies down. When Sam wakes, Jack is carrying her back to the bedroom. He lays her down, slips into bed behind her, and pulls the sheets and blankets up over them both. Sam falls into a deeply restful sleep.

 

It’s late on Christmas morning when they finally wake up. 

 

Coffee, she wants coffee. And she could really use a shower. But more than anything, she doesn’t want to break the spell of the night before. She looks out the window and sees that the sun is out now but they’re pretty thoroughly snowed in. Jack tightens his arms around her waist and kisses her neck. They’re both still completely naked. She’s not even sure where her clothes are at this point. 

 

“You want pancakes?” he whispers into her hair.

 

“Mmm,” she says. “And coffee?"

 

“I’ll bring you all the coffee your heart desires.” His hands wander up, brushing the sides of her breasts and causing her to shiver involuntarily. But then he sits up. “There’s a shower in the master bathroom, if you want,” he says, and Sam wonders again if he can read her mind. “And towels.” He slips on some pants that he finds on the floor. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes."

 

Sam gets up after he leaves, uses the bathroom and showers. She notices how her body is sore in ways it has not been sore for years. It’s a good sore though, a really satisfyingly good sore. When she finishes in the shower, she runs her fingers through her hair and wraps a towel around her torso and emerges from the bathroom to find Jack, true to his word, with a tray holding a cup of black coffee for her and two plates stacked high with pancakes.

 

They sit down on the bed and dig into their breakfast, but Jack looks like he’s got something to say. “This is going to change things,” he says finally.

 

Sam nods, because it will, but also, it won’t. It will intensify her feelings for him, maybe, and it will make her all the more excited about Christmas next year for sure, but it won’t fundamentally change anything.

 

“Are we ok with that?” he asks. She understands why he needs to ask, but he doesn’t have anything to worry about. And she loves how he says “we” when he’s actually just asking her, because he will defer to what she wants and needs, he always does.

 

Sam puts her fork down on her plate. “Jack.” She looks him straight in the eye. “I am more ok right now than I have been in a long time."

 

“Yeah?” he says.

 

“I thought I was pretty clear last night,” she teases.

 

He smiles. “I know,” he says. “I just… want to be sure."

 

“You can be sure,” she says confidently. He seems satisfied, and they resume their breakfast, Jack still in nothing but sweatpants and Sam still in nothing but a towel. There’s plenty of looking, and they’re not at all being shy about it, because in the bright, snow-cast sunlight of Christmas morning, she finds his half-clad form more alluring than ever. He apparently feels the same way about her, because he’s hardly finished his pancakes when he reaches over to pull her towel away. She lets him, and soon she’s on her back, again, and his mouth is closing over one of her nipples while his hand sneaks down her hip.

 

“I’ve never had this much sex in one 24-hour period,” she says, chuckling and then gasping as he bites down gently. 

 

“We’re saving up,” he says solemnly, “for the year ahead."

 

He’s right, of course, though somehow she hadn’t thought of it this way before. She was too caught up in the moment, maybe, the moments, to worry about that yet.

 

Their last joining is slow and leisurely, drawn out as long as possible. After they both finish, he gathers her into his arms again and brushes his fingers up and down her back in a now-familiar gesture. Soon, they’ll pile into his truck and he’ll drive her home, she'll pack for her trip to San Diego, and leave Colorado behind. Soon after that, too soon, they’ll be back at the SGC, Colonel O’Neill and Major Carter, working together and saving the planet, like they do. But for now, right now, he lays a small kiss on the corner of her mouth.

 

“Merry Christmas, Sam.” Sam doesn’t think she’s ever been quite this content in her entire life.

 

“Merry Christmas, Jack."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI for my lovely and generous readers out there, it will likely be a couple days before chapter 6 gets posted, but I do intend and hope to get this finished by the end of the year.... fingers crossed real life makes that possible. Merry Christmas!


	6. Chapter 6

The sixth year they spend Christmas together is somewhat more subdued. There’s sex, of course, but not quite as much holiday merriment and cheer to go with it.

 

Daniel is dead. Technically, he’s not “dead” dead, but practically, it’s the same.

 

Jack died too, several times. And then he disappeared without a trace, and then Sam almost died herself. 

 

Things are harder this year. Things are more intense. In the past, their many brushes with death had felt adventurous. They felt daring. They felt heroic. Sam had always believed that had they died instead of making it by the skin of their teeth, their deaths would’ve meant something, achieved something. But now their brushes with death are cruelly pointless. Sam used to feel energized and empowered by their exploits, capable, at least, but increasingly, she just feels nervous, which is not a feeling she likes at all.

 

In the days leading up to Christmas, Teal’c makes a point to invite SG-1’s newest and perkiest member to join him for a special Tau’ri holiday movie event. Jonas accepts his invitation eagerly, like he does everything, and Teal’c looks meaningfully at Sam and Jack. They’re off the hook for entertaining Jonas, not that they had any intention of doing so, but still, it’s nice to know that nothing social will be expected of them. Sam wonders how long Teal’c has known, or at least suspected, what they really do for Christmas.

 

When Jack opens his door for her on Christmas Eve, they’re on each other before the door closes again, but this is not the self-assured, triumphant passion of last Christmas. It’s not even kissing. This is clutching, clinging, holding onto each other and grasping tightly for every near miss they’ve had in the last year.

 

“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispers into her hair. It’s only been a week since they narrowly escaped Nirrti and her twisted experiments with human DNA.

 

Sam wants to laugh, she wants to cry, because isn’t that her line? She thought she’d lost him when he nearly died of that Ancient disease they’d dug up out of the ice in Antarctica, and then she’d begged him to take a Tok’ra and he did, for her, she knows it was just for her, and that Tok’ra delivered him to Ba’al, who tortured him to death, and thanks to the miracle of the sarcophagus, was able to do so repeatedly. And that Harry fucking Maybourne thing, that one really was her fault, because she’d let her guard down and let Maybourne grab her zat and she thought Jack was gone from her forever.

 

Sam remembers how completely she lost it - her composure, her usefulness, her sense of self - after Jack disappeared. She wonders when it’s going to be time for something else to give, something more than Christmas, one day a year, and the small but cheerful traditions they’ve built up together.

 

She hasn’t replied to him and he pulls back, puts his hands on her face and looks into her eyes, which she’s just realized are stinging with tears. “Will you kiss me?” she asks, and he nods, wiping her tears with his thumbs before pressing his lips to hers.

 

They end up in bed again, as the sun begins to set on Christmas Eve, just like last year, but not at all like last year. This isn’t the joyful reunion of long lost lovers, this is the desperate joining of two people who’d feared they’d missed their last chance. She pours her whole self into making love to him, until Jack O’Neill is all she can see and hear and taste and feel, and she cries out his name when she comes and he collapses on top of her, panting hot breaths onto her sweat-drenched skin.

 

They lay there on their backs next to each other for a while, and Sam can’t believe it but she feels herself starting to doze. She wonders, not for the first time, if this whole Nirrti thing hasn't freaked her out more than she’s letting herself admit. “Hey,” Jack says, rolling onto his side and placing a hand on her hip. “Let me make you some dinner."

 

She nods at him, and he leans over and kisses her on the forehead before standing up and tossing her some sweats as he dons another pair. Once she’s clothed again, he stands in front of her with his hands on her arms. “We both made it,” he says. 

 

She nods again, not sure how to find the words to express the terror and helplessness she’s lived through this past year, the anger and the frustration and the crippling self-doubt.

 

“And it’s Christmas,” he says. “So let’s… be Christmasy, ok?"

 

She tries for a small smile and nods one more time, feeling immensely grateful that he seems to have motivation enough for both of them to make a Christmas out of this. He suffered more than she did this past year, by her calculations. If he can do Christmas, so can she. “Ok,” she agrees.

 

“Good,” he says, taking her hand and leading her out of the bedroom. “Because I got steaks. And red vines. And pie."

 

“Pie?” she says.

 

“Pie."

 

“Well, that does change things,” she says, and he smiles back at her.

 

They walk to the kitchen and Sam looks into the living room as the pass through the dining room. “You already got a tree,” she says.

 

Jack smirks. “It seemed possible we might have a repeat of last year,” he said, and she chuckles at this.

 

“But you didn’t decorate it."

 

“It’s your job to string the lights,” he says. “Can’t hang the ornaments until you string the lights.” He shrugs, and she looks again at the bare tree in his living room, the tree that’s been sitting there for days, maybe. Jack could string the lights himself, but he waited for her.

 

“I brought some ornaments this year,” she says, a little hesitantly. It feels like a big step, though she’s not sure why, her Christmas lights have been here for years now, and he said she could bring her ornaments. Maybe it’s because of which ornaments she brought.

 

“Good,” he says, and he nods at her as he turns away into the kitchen, “that’s good."

 

“You could’ve gotten something a little bit taller, you know."

 

He spins around and points at her. “I _knew_ you were going to say that."

 

She shrugs innocently. “There’s like 8 inches of empty space between the top of the tree and the ceiling. Of course I’m going to say that."

 

Jack rolls his eyes as he grabs the steaks out of the fridge. “You’re crazy, you know that, right?"

 

“What’s crazy is that 8 inches of wasted tree space,” she replies, and he smacks the back of her head lightly as he passes on his way out to the deck. She laughs, and feels lighter than she's felt in months.

 

“Shouldn’t we decorate the tree before we eat?” she wonders aloud as he holds open the door for her.

 

“Nope,” Jack replies. “You made me hungry. Steak first."

 

Sam can’t argue with that. Jack brushes the snow off the grill and cooks up the steaks while Sam leans against him in the cold outside. It’s been snowing on and off all week, and the ground is covered in white, though the skies are clear tonight. They eat at the dining room table, which is a first, and Sam sips her wine while Jack drinks his beer.

 

When their meal is done, they get to work on the tree. Sam strings the lights while Jack positions the star, which has plenty of room at the top of the tree this year. When it’s time for the ornaments, Sam retrieves the small box she’d brought. It makes her a little sad every Christmas to think of these beloved holiday decorations in a box in her basement, and she’s thankful they’ll have a chance to fulfill their purpose, for this year, at least.

 

There’s a small porcelain stocking with a teddy bear poking out the top that says “Baby’s First Christmas, 1968.” There’s a picture of her and her brother, ages 5 and 8, cut in a circle and glued onto the inside of the lid of a jam jar, with a lace doily behind it for decoration, red paint around the outside and a piece of very old gold ribbon strung through a hole at the top. There’s a snowflake her mother gave her with her name embroidered on it. There are others even she can’t remember where they’re from, they’ve just always been a part of her family’s Christmas.

 

“What’s this one?” Jack asks, holding up a delicate glass ball with the State of California painted on it.

 

“That’s the year we moved to San Diego, the first time,” Sam says, turning it around in his hand so he can see the date, 1974. 

 

“And this one?” he asks.

 

Sam snorts a laugh. It’s a mouse, hand-stitched, dressed as a clown holding a clear plastic umbrella, which has long since broken. Why a mouse would dress like a clown and need an umbrella has never been clear to Sam. The ornament looks crappy, and more than a little creepy too. It’s got to be at least 60 or 70 years old. “My grandma collected clowns. She gave me a whole bunch of her ornaments. This one is an antique. Very valuable, I’m sure.” 

 

“I’m sure,” Jack says, flicking the broken plastic umbrella with his finger. “You sure Mark didn’t want this one?” He grimaces.

 

“Oh, he did,” she teases. “I fought him for it. Family heirloom, you know. Very special."

 

“Mmm,” Jack says. “I don’t know if _special_  is exactly the word that comes to mind for me."

 

They hang all the ornaments, the generic ones he got years ago that are now familiar to her, alongside her more sentimental and sometimes creepy ones. Jack talks a little about some of the ornaments he doesn’t have, ones Charlie made, which were all left with Sara at a time in his life when he couldn’t possibly imagine ever celebrating Christmas again. He recalls popsicle stick Christmas trees finger-painted green, and candy cane reindeer with googly eyes and pipe cleaner antlers. Sam smiles. They would fit right in on their tree this year.

 

When they’re done, the tree looks fuller, cozier, and more festive than it ever has before, even if it’s a little too short.

 

“We did good,” Jack says, pulling Sam into his side.

 

“Yeah,” she agrees. They really did.

 

The sky is still clear, so they grab their coffee thermos and their red vines and their blankets and their hot bricks off the fire and head up to the roof, where Jack pulls a tarp off the telescope and chairs and hits a button to light the small strand of battery-operated lights along the railing.

 

“I love these,” Sam says, gently fingering the lights.

 

“I know,” Jack says. She smiles at him again, and he reaches up to brush his hand against her cheek.

 

Sam takes her seat and opens the bag of red vines while Jack positions the telescope. Tonight, they're looking closer to home, at planets in Earth’s own solar system and familiar constellations that have fascinated them both since they were children. “There,” Jack says. “Jupiter. See?”

 

Sam looks, and sure enough, there’s Jupiter, bright and solid and steady, their next door neighbor, relatively speaking. Sam remembers seeing Jupiter through a telescope for the first time when she was twelve years old. She’d dreamed of someday voyaging as far as Mars, but Jupiter had always seemed unachievable in her lifetime. Sam feels a flash of wonder that she hasn’t felt in a long time at the things she does in her everyday life as a matter of course, traveling across the galaxy through stable wormholes thanks to miraculous devices built thousands of years ago. She remembers, for the first time in what seems like a very long time, that her job is really amazing, even when it’s also really terrible.

 

They stargaze for over an hour, eating most of the red vines and remembering to each other why they fell in love with the stars in the first place. When the coffee runs out and the hot bricks get cold, they head back inside and eat pie on the couch while watching season two of the Simpsons, Sam’s present for Jack this year. To be fair, they don’t actually watch much of the show. The fire is roaring in the fireplace and the Christmas tree shines perfectly and Jack’s lips on her neck and hand up her sweatshirt make her feel like her life is pretty good. Pretty spectacular, even. 

 

They wind up in bed for round three, and when it’s over, they’re both lying on their backs again, breathing heavily, holding each others' hands. 

 

“Do you ever wish we’d done this before?” she says, once her breathing has evened out.

 

“Before?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember last Christmas."

 

“Oh, I remember,” she says. “I think about it often.” He chuckles and squeezes her hand. “But like Jonah and Thera. They never had sex. We could’ve had a chance then, and we didn’t take it."

 

He turns his head and considers her carefully for a moment. “I’m glad Jonah and Thera didn’t do anything more than they did. I’m glad it was us, actually us, who made the decision the first time, to… to take Christmas off together,” he says. 

 

She nods thoughtfully. “It’s just that sometimes I think about the opportunities we’ve missed,” she admits.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I do too."

 

She’s quiet, carefully weighing her next words, and then she takes a deep breath in and out and says, “I could request reassignment."

 

“What?” He turns onto his side now to look at her.

 

“To another program,” she says. “To get me out of your chain of command. There are lots of programs that want me. Area 51 has been trying to lure me away from the SGC for years, and now there’s the X303 -"

 

“Prometheus?” he says. “You’d be gone for months at a time. We’d never even see each other."

 

“But we could be together more than once a year,” she says.

 

“Sure,” he says. “Like two or three times, maybe.” 

 

“I know, but we wouldn’t have to pretend anymore, pretend we don’t care about each other."

 

He’s quiet for a while. “SG-1 can’t lose you,” he says, and she hears what he’s not saying too, that they already lost Daniel, and that losing her too would be more than the team could withstand.

 

“I don’t know,” she says.

 

“I do,” he insists.

 

They’re quiet for a while, fingers intertwined as they stare up at the ceiling.

 

“I could retire,” he says. 

 

Sam breathes in and out. “No, you can’t,” she says.

 

“I can to,” he says. “I’ve done it before.” 

 

“They won’t let you now."

 

“How do you know?"

 

“I just know,” she says, and he doesn’t push it, and she’s grateful, because she doesn’t want to think about Ba’al right now. She doesn’t want to think about those frantic days when he first came back from the hell hole where Ba’al was keeping him, when he was in and out of consciousness, recovering from sarcophagus withdrawal. She doesn’t want to think about how General Hammond, in a meeting with herself, Teal’c, Fraiser and McKenzie, revealed that the powers that be had ordained that basically, as long as Jack could walk and hold a P-90, he was to return to active duty as the leader of SG-1 as soon as possible. She doesn’t want to remember how sick this had made her feel, how disgusted at her country and the organization to which she had pledged her life, and how desperately she had ached to crawl onto the hospital bed with him and wipe the sweat from his brow as he panted and cried out and relived untold horrors in his dreams.

 

“It’s just… sometimes I worry that this won’t be enough,” she admits finally, and she dares a glance over in his direction.

 

He turns on his side again and his other hand finds hers and he gives both her hands a reassuring squeeze. She’s afraid he’s going to say something trite that will make her angry, like hey, this is better than nothing, isn’t it?

 

But instead he holds onto her and says, in that authoritative and irresistible voice of his, “We’ll make it 'til next Christmas, Sam."

 

Her eyes sting with tears, again, she can’t help it, because that’s what she’s actually worried about, and after the year they’ve had, who could blame her? And of course he’s understood exactly what she was feeling before she even understood herself.

 

“How do you know?"

 

He shrugs. “I just know."

 

“Ok,” she says. If he won’t argue with that, then she won’t either. She kisses him again, and he pulls her close to him, pulls the covers up over them, and rubs his hands over her arms, her back, her face, until she feels herself drifting off to sleep.

 

“Merry Christmas, Sam,” he whispers.

 

“Merry Christmas, Jack."


	7. Chapter 7

The seventh year they’re supposed to spend Christmas together, they don't. The Prometheus has been limping toward Earth for almost a year, traveling for short bursts in hyperspace and then dropping out to let the engines cool. They plan their drops near planets with Stargates when they can, and the Prometheus has been swapping personnel and gathering needed equipment and supplies at each such stop.

 

Since this whole process began, Sam has been trying to come up with some genius way to get the ship, her ship, and its crew home faster. The 303 is Sam’s baby. Jack knows Sam feels responsible for how badly the Prometheus’ first official mission had gone, though she shouldn’t.  It wasn’t her fault that they came into contact with a gravitational wave that overloaded the ship’s reactor buffer while they were in hyperspace, no one could have predicted that, not even her. It wasn’t her fault that they had to jettison the Naquadria reactor, or that the subsequent EM pulse caused so much damage to the ship. And it definitely wasn’t her fault that the Tagreans were so messed up and nearly got them all killed.

 

Nonetheless, Jack knows that Sam wants to be as personally involved in the repairs as possible. The Prometheus is using a hyperdrive engine they took from a captured Al’kesh bomber, which is a much smaller ship, hence the short bursts at hyperspeed and the long, limping journey. Sam's actually been out there a few times, just for a week or so each time, to lend a hand and analyze the data and things like that, because for some reason the data is so much more analyzable when you’re actually on the ship, or so she says.

 

A week before Christmas, Sam finally has a breakthrough on how to increase the efficiency of the Al’kesh engine so the Prometheus can take longer jumps through hyperspace, hopefully trimming a couple weeks off their journey, maybe a month. A couple of weeks means a lot to the crew and even more to the people footing the bill, so the USAF wants to implement this breakthrough of Sam’s right away. Of course she wants to oversee the implementation. And of course the ship is about to be within range of a planet with a Stargate.

 

Four days before Christmas, Jack makes a point to run into Sam as she exits the locker room after she’s geared up for her trip through the gate to rendezvous with the Prometheus. He walks with her toward the gate room. “So,” he says quietly, keeping his face carefully neutral. “Christmas."

 

She peeks over at him. “I know, sir."

 

“Maybe SG-1 should come along with you,” he says, though they’ve never accompanied her on any of her other trips out to the Prometheus before.

 

“Hm,” she pretends to consider his offer. “There should be some pretty amazing stargazing."

 

“And red vines."

 

“Oh?"

 

He stops walking and pulls a zip lock bag out of his pocket. Four red vines are inside.

 

Sam beams at him, more brightly than she usually allows when they’re on base or otherwise acting in their official capacities as Colonel and Major. He really, really loves her smile.

 

“I hope you kept some for yourself, sir,” she says as she tucks the bag into the inside pocket of her tak vest.

 

“You can count on it, Major,” he says, resuming their walk to the gate room. “This happens to be my favorite candy, you know."

 

They don’t say anything else for the rest of their walk. Jack wants to joke and suggest that this year, they move Christmas to President’s Day or something. But it would only be half a joke, and he knows that the half that’s not a joke is too dangerous. They’re already breaking the rules badly enough by taking Christmas off every year, and to stray from the specific parameters they’ve set would open the doors for all hell to break lose. So he says nothing else, but basks in the smile on her face for as long as he can.

 

She’s still grinning as she walks through the gate.

 

Jack is working this Christmas, actually. He’s in the control room and he talks to Colonel Ronson at the Prometheus’ scheduled check-in on Christmas Eve. Ronson reports that Sam has twisted his arm into stopping along their way to see some nebula-that’s-not-actually-a-nebula. Jack wants to say something about stargazing, but he holds back.

 

When he gets home at 0300 on Christmas morning, he heads straight for his roof, uncovers the telescope, and takes the partially-empty bag of red vines out of his pocket. He points the telescope in the direction he thinks the Prometheus might be, chewing thoughtfully on his red vine. Sam would know for sure where it is. She’d be able to point out stars it’s recently passed. She’d find her new not-a-nebula thing and talk his ear off about it, and he’d pretend to be annoyed, but would secretly (not so secretly) love every second of it.

 

She’s not standing here next to him, but she’s standing out there, somewhere, eating red vines and looking at the stars, just like he is, and wow if that isn’t kind of a big deal to Jack. As night turns slowly into Christmas Day, Jack climbs back down the ladder and crawls into bed alone, but he doesn’t feel alone, not like he used to. Not anymore.

 

Then on Christmas Day, the Prometheus misses its scheduled check-in.

 

And the next day.

 

And the next day.

 

After four days, long past the time Jack had given up hope, a call comes through on subspace. It’s them. It’s her. Jack wants to fall to his knees in relief.

 

She’s there, on the Prometheus, she’s alive. But she has collapsed, from exhaustion, they assume, and Jack can’t bear to think about what it must take for someone like Sam collapse from exhaustion. Ronson tells the SGC what he knows of what happened, and says they’re digging through the ship’s logs and her logs, trying to piece it all together. She apparently wasn’t able to stay conscious long enough to make much of a report. The Prometheus moves as quickly and safely as possible to the nearest Stargate planet and Sam is sent straight to the SGC's infirmary, still comatose. 

 

Jack will not leave her side. He was a useless mess while she was missing. It was an embarrassment, actually. And he’s not making it any better now, sitting and keeping vigil over her like this. But she has to wake up. She has to.

 

He’s known all along that Sam isn’t just a Christmas fling. He’s known the word one would use to describe the way he feels about her, and he’s never said it to her, because he doesn’t think he needs to. He doesn’t think it would change anything. But sitting here at her side, praying for her to flinch or wiggle her finger or god forbid, open her eyes, he feels overwhelmed by it, completely bowled over. He can’t stop it, he can’t hide it, he can’t even turn it off long enough to do his fucking job. What if she had needed him? What if something had happened to her because he was too in love with her to get his shit together and be useful?

 

She opens her eyes at that moment. She calls him Jack.

 

He balks. “Excuse me?” he says.

 

And she apologizes, calls him sir, and the next thing he knows, it’s two weeks later and she’s dating some guy named Pete.


	8. Chapter 8

 The eighth year they would’ve spent Christmas together, Jack is finally back to his original plan for the holiday: a six pack of beer alone on his couch.

 

He doesn’t have a clue what Sam and her brand new fiancee are doing for Christmas, and he doesn’t care. He’s not thinking about her. They’re probably going to roast a goddamn turkey, bake ten different kinds of Christmas cookies and watch all those really sappy Christmas movies that he knows for a fact Sam hates. Maybe she doesn’t hate them anymore. Maybe she loves them. Maybe they’re not really watching the movies anyway, like she used to not really watch the movies with him. 

 

That thought turns his stomach. This is why he's supposed to be not thinking about her. Jesus Christ, he needs another beer.

 

He gets up and goes to the kitchen, and briefly considers just bringing all the beer back to the couch with him at once. It would get warm, but it would save him from having to repeatedly get up for more beer, which is already proving annoying. He can’t quite decide if this idea is practical or really, really depressing.

 

Jealousy is not something for which Jack usually has much patience. He finds it unbecoming, and completely unproductive. He deeply wants Sam to be happy and he does not want to think ill of her, he shouldn’t, not for finding someone she loves and wanting to get married. But that someone is not him, and if Christmas is about anything, Jack has decided, it’s about letting yourself have one special day out of the year to wallow in misery. So tonight, Christmas Eve, he is not bothering with trying to be a good sport. He is wallowing.

 

He’s just cracked open his third beer when the doorbell rings. It’s starting to get dark out and he hasn’t turned on any lights in the house yet, so it actually looks like he’s drinking beer alone on his couch in the dark, not that he cares what it looks like. And he doesn’t bother to turn on any lights as he walks to the door to see who would dare disturb his Christmas Eve plans.

 

He opens the door and there she is.

 

Jack doesn’t move. He not exactly sure if this is real or a dream, serious or a joke. But when moments pass and she hasn’t disappeared or dematerialized or otherwise gone away, he narrows his eyes at her. He hopes it makes her feel a little nervous, because what the hell is she doing here? If he’s being honest, she does look a little nervous, actually. Then he opens his mouth and says exactly what he’s thinking, like he does:

 

“You can’t take Christmas off from being engaged."

 

It’s a low blow and he knows it. It implies things about her that he knows would never be true, and it’s mean-spirited for him to have said it. But he doesn’t care. He’s not sure why she’s here or what she's expecting from him this evening, but this is what she’s going to get. She flushes, but holds his gaze. “I know. I’m not."

 

Crap, she doesn’t want to take Christmas off, she’s come for her Christmas ornaments. Of course. She and the love of her life, who’s not him, probably went and got some huge, beautiful Christmas tree. He probably didn’t complain at all about how big it is. And now they probably want to fill it up with all her weird and perfect old family ornaments. Well, the joke’s on her, because when he took down his decorations two years ago, he didn’t separate hers from his. So if she wants them back, she’s going to have to sort through the boxes by herself while he continues with his own perfectly perfect plans of drinking beer alone on the couch in the dark.

 

“I’m not _engaged_ , Jack."

 

It takes him a second to process what she’s just said. He narrows his eyes even further but she looks less nervous now that she’s gotten that off her chest.

 

“Can I come in?"

 

Jack still doesn’t reply, can’t reply. 

 

“Ok,” she sighs, shifting on her feet. “I just… I couldn’t stand the thought of Christmas with him.” She winces a little, perhaps at how bad that sounds out loud. It does sound pretty bad, for Pete, at least. "Pete kept wanting to… plan stuff, and do things, and at every turn, I just couldn’t, couldn’t get a tree with him, couldn’t decorate it, couldn’t even think about meals or desserts or drinks or parties or presents or anything.” She shrugs and looks off into the distance. "I tried. But he kept wanting to talk about our Christmas traditions and the future and... I couldn’t do it. And I realized that it’s because...” She looks back at him and locks his gaze, brave as she ever is. “Because the only one I want to spend Christmas with is you."

 

Jack blinks at this, and feels the blood start to rush to his head. “So you broke off your engagement on Christmas Eve?"

 

“I broke off my engagement a week ago,” she says. “I just didn’t know how to tell you."

 

Take out a billboard, get an airplane to tow a banner that says “Pete is history”? Jump him in the gate room? Without really even trying, Jack can easily think of a few ways she could’ve told him. But that’s not the point.

 

“So you’re… not engaged to Pete.” She nods, smiling hesitantly. “And you’re… here,” he says flatly. Her smile falters.

 

“Can I come in now?” she says, but he doesn’t move. It’s not that he doesn’t want her in his house, per se, it’s just that he doesn’t want her in his house if she’s planning to talk for five minutes and then leave him again. It’s one thing to drink beer alone in the dark, but it’s quite another thing to drink beer alone in the dark after Sam Carter has left you on Christmas Eve.

 

She sighs again when he doesn’t respond and rubs her forehead with a gloved hand, apparently resigning herself to having this conversation outside in the snow. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” she explains. “I thought I needed to move on, I thought we both needed that, I thought it was best for me and for you. But I was wrong, I was completely wrong.”

 

She pauses and gives him a chance to jump in but he really, really doesn’t want to interrupt this train of thought. So after a beat, she continues. “You and I never promised each other anything. We never asked each other to make any promises. But Jack, I’m telling you right now, you’re the only one I want to spend Christmas with. Ever. All the rest of my Christmases. You’re the only one I want to spend anything with, or everything, and I know it’s wrong and I know we can’t. But that’s what’s true."

 

She’s nearly out of breath when she finishes, and Jack is too. Her face is shining in the Christmas Eve twilight and her impassioned speech has made her breath puff little clouds in the air between them and her eyes are more intensely blue than he’s ever seen. And she’s just said...

 

Jack straightens. “I didn’t get any red vines,” he says finally.

 

“What?” she says.

 

“Or steak. I don’t have a tree either. Do you think the lot’s still open?"

 

Looking dumbstruck, she actually checks her watch. “I think so,” she says.

 

“Let me get my coat,” he says, ducking back into the house.

 

When he reemerges a moment later, she’s still rooted to her spot on his doorstep. He walks past her toward his truck and she grabs his arm. “Jack,” she says. “Are we doing this?” This, Christmas, Christmases?

 

He pauses and frowns. “Didn’t you just say -"

 

“Yeah, _I_ just said,” she says. “But you didn’t say anything.” And he finally processes what she’d said earlier, that she thought this whole moving on plan was best for him too, like maybe she thought he didn’t love her, or maybe she thought he didn’t want to love her, or maybe she thought she loved him more than he loved her back, when nothing could be farther from the truth. 

 

“Oh,” he says. “Sam.” And he gathers her up into his arms and feels the relief in her body even through their thick winter coats. He presses a kiss to her temple. “I have been in love with you for a very long time,” he says deeply, quietly. “And there is nothing on this planet or any other that could ever, ever change that.” 

 

She drops her head on against his chest and lets out a small sob and he kisses the side of her head again, then pulls back and softly kisses her closed eyes, wipes her tears.

 

Some day, maybe, they'll sit down and hash this all out, so that they can both understand what the hell happened, if for no other reason than to make sure that it never happens again, that she never again wonders or doubts him or thinks someone like Pete Shanahan is her best bet. And someday, they'll try figure out what it even means for them to be together, two Air Force officers in the same chain of command, neck-deep in a never-ending war against the Goa'uld. But that day is not today.

 

“We’re doing this,” he says.

 

“We’re doing this,” she repeats.

 

“Ok."

 

He kisses her then, a long, sweet kiss eight years in the making as the neighbor’s automatic timer flicks on a bright display of Christmas lights across the street.

 

“Merry Christmas, Sam."

 

“Jack,” she says, tucking her head into his shoulder as they walk arm in arm to his truck. “Merry Christmas."


End file.
